Person of the Week: Vladimir Kara-Murza

On 2 February 2017 journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who works for the Open Russia organization, was hospitalised with organ failure, two years after he almost died of suspected poisoning. As the BBC reported, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is a prominent Russian opposition activist and journalist, fell ill at about 05:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on 2 February. He was placed in a medically-induced coma on life support in hospital. The BBC quoted Vladimir Kara-Murza's wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, as saying: "He is already on life support and in a medicated coma. It's the same clinical picture [as last time]." Vladimir Kara-Murza nearly died when he suffered sudden kidney failure in 2015. The BBC comments: "No cause was ever established for Mr Kara-Murza's last illness, but tests confirmed that he had ingested a poisonous substance." The day before he fell ill (1 February) Vladimir Kara-Murza had posted on Facebook a short tribute to his friend Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in Moscow on 27 February 2015. This was a picture of a bouquet of roses marking the spot on Moscow's Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge near the Kremlin where Nemtsov was gunned down with the words 'Мы здесь. Мы помним' - 'We are here. We remember.'